Safety First ( Secret Service Protection )

[-]

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/020909/usnews/9service.htm

Cover Story 9/9/02
Safety First

Personnel losses and other problems make
the Secret Service's job tougher than ever

BY CHITRA RAGAVAN

On a warm summer night last year, a 19-year-old woman sat in a crowded
bar, engaged in a rite of passage familiar to countless college-age
teens: persuading a bartender to break the law and sell her a drink.
This was no ordinary teenager, though. She was Jenna Bush, the
daughter of President George W. and first lady Laura Bush. The
bartender was amenable to serving the young woman-until he spotted two
agents from her Secret Service detail. Nervous, he approached the
agents and asked what he should do. Use your best judgment, the agents
shrugged. The bartender promptly asked Jenna Bush to leave. She was
furious. A Secret Service agent familiar with the incident told U.S.
News that Jenna berated her agents, then fled the bar into a dark
alley. Sources say one of the agents chased Jenna, and she taunted
him. "You know if anything happens to me," she said, "my dad would
have your ass."

Not quite. After she called her father to complain about the incident,
which is still widely recounted among agents, President Bush declined
to side with Jenna. Laura Bush, however, was concerned about what
Jenna and her twin sister, Barbara, view as repeated intrusions into
their privacy. As a result, sources say, agents assigned to the
protective details of the Bush twins have been ordered to pull back
from traditional methods of coverage. Many agents say they regard this
as a serious security risk. "They have no concept," says one source
who has protected members of the Bush family. ". . . They act like
they don't have any concept of world events and how vulnerable they
are or can be."

Protecting the lives of families of top government officials has never
been easy. By the same token, living under the controlling, intrusive,
often overbearing, and seemingly omnipotent presence of agents can be
stifling for political leaders and their families, especially for
children. Presidents do what they can to strike a balance between
protecting themselves and their families by acceding to the demands of
agents, at the same time fighting for the right to have some semblance
of a normal life. Some family members unused to the constant presence
of armed law enforcement officers seek restrictions on agents'
activities and guarantees of privacy. Others, more hostile, rebel and
try to give their minders the slip, as Jenna's sister, Barbara, has
done. Last April, Barbara's agents were lampooned by the Yale
University magazine Rumpus after the car she was in sped through an
E-ZPass lane as Barbara and her friends drove from New Haven, Conn.,
to a World Wrestling Federation match in New York. Members of her
security detail had to wait in the toll lane on a bridge into
Manhattan, then weave through traffic at high speeds to catch up. In
Texas, Jenna evaded her Secret Service agents following class last
fall, after the September 11 attacks, sources say. When she finally
surfaced after several hours, a supervisor on her protective detail
lectured the young woman and warned against repeating such behavior.

The Bush twins aren't alone. Secret Service sources tell U.S. News
that shortly after 9/11, President Bush sought expanded coverage for
other Bush family members through an executive order. But this June,
President Bush changed his mind and ordered the Secret Service to
discontinue the security details he had authorized for several family
members. "They are dictating coverage," says a Secret Service agent.
"And what's worse is we're letting them."

"Protective methodology." After September 11, Secret Service
executives made significant additions to President Bush's security
arrangements. But some agents worry that Bush's ranch in Crawford,
Texas, with its vast, open spaces, poses serious staffing and
logistical challenges, difficulties that give pause to even the
toughest military-trained tactical teams in the service. Providing
security for its protectees in remote locations like the president's
ranch is regarded as among the most difficult challenges by Secret
Service executives, agents, and officers.

How to best guarantee the safety of the president, the vice president,
and their families is just one element of a larger debate among line
agents, uniformed officers, and Secret Service executives about the
agency's changing role and responsibilities. In the past year,
Director Brian Stafford has implemented a broad new security theory
known as "protective methodology." Many agents and officers say this
plan goes against the grain of time-tested Secret Service methods and
practices and could expose protectees and their bodyguards to possible
attack by reducing customary layers of protective "insulation." The
changes include cutting the number of posts where agents and officers
stand guard, eliminating some technical assets like magnetometers,
ballistic glass, and armored plating, and withdrawing Counter Sniper,
Counter Surveillance, Counter Assault, and other tactical teams.
"Basically, what we are doing now and what we were trained to do are
at different ends of the spectrum," says a veteran agent. "It doesn't
make sense."

Director Stafford declined to respond to an interview request. Paul
Irving, who heads the Office of Government Liaison and Public Affairs,
also failed to reply to a detailed list of questions for this article.
A senior White House official who works closely with the Secret
Service said he believes the service is doing a "terrific" job
protecting President Bush and other top government officials and their
families. Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, also declined to
respond to specific questions, saying, "We do not discuss security
issues. The president and Mrs. Bush are grateful and appreciative for
the outstanding job the Secret Service does in protecting the first
family and others."

Traditionally, the Secret Service has relied on a guarantee of
360-degree coverage of its protectees. The approach calls for a team
of agents enveloping the person under protection in a kind of moving
box, covering him or her from all angles. The new protective
methodology, by contrast, is based on an evaluation of "threat
assessments," calculating different levels of risk confronting
protectees like the vice president, his wife, and their children, the
president's children, and the first lady. Using current intelligence
information and historic precedents like past assassination attempts,
Secret Service executives determine how many agents and what kinds of
special teams and capabilities to assign individual protectees. For
instance, vice presidents have been considered a relatively low
assassination risk. Vice President Cheney, as a result, under the
protective methodology approach, like other VPs, has received fewer
assets and tactical support teams than the president.

Some Secret Service agents say that a protective theory based so
heavily on intelligence analysis may be dangerously flawed, especially
in light of the intelligence failures that occurred prior to the
September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These
individuals say that Secret Service executives have sometimes ignored
or discounted security recommendations more heavily weighted to
intelligence analysis, despite the fact that such analysis has been so
heavily emphasized by Director Stafford and other proponents of the
protective-methodology theory. Shortly after September 11, Cheney's
security was beefed up. Then in December, Stafford and his deputy,
Danny Spriggs, met with Secret Service agents and Uniformed Division
officers at the Naval Observatory, Cheney's official residence.
Sources say the meeting was intended as a morale booster. Stafford
told the agents and officers that though they were not assigned to the
elite presidential protective detail, they were doing a vitally
important job. Intelligence analysts rated Cheney as a higher security
risk than President Bush, Stafford continued, because of his having
served as the first President Bush's secretary of defense during the
Persian Gulf War a decade ago. The war, and the presence of thousands
of American troops in Saudi Arabia before, during and after it, have
been cited as a principal source of grievance by Osama bin Laden and
others in his al Qaeda terrorist organization. Shortly after the
meeting, however, several sources tell U.S. News, Secret Service
executives reduced the level of Cheney's protection. "You say this guy
is the biggest threat? They started cutting," says one former officer.
"They were short of manpower for the Olympics. They cut posts
everywhere." By Christmas, several Secret Service officials say, the
special Counter Assault, Counter Sniper, and Emergency Response teams
assigned to Cheney immediately after September 11 were phased out. For
months, the Secret Service also rejected recommendations for
magnetometers, or X-ray machines, to screen attendees at public events
where Cheney appeared. These same sources say the service began
assigning more Mag officers, as they are called, to Cheney's detail
after U.S. News reported (June 17, 2002) on the agency's recent
cost-cutting measures and personnel difficulties. The Treasury
Department's inspector general initiated an investigation of each of
the allegations cited in the magazine's earlier story. That inquiry is
continuing, sources say. The department's top law enforcement
official, Under Secretary for Law Enforcement Jimmy Gurulé, sources
say, has also begun interviewing officers to gauge the extent of
problems documented by the magazine in the Secret Service's Uniformed
Division.

"Brokenhearted." The agents who spoke to U.S. News for this account
are all currently employed by the Secret Service and have held a
variety of high-profile assignments, including protecting the
president and vice president, the first lady, Lynne Cheney, and other
members of the Bush and Cheney families. They spoke on condition of
strict anonymity. In addition, U.S. News spoke to many former
Uniformed Division officers who have guarded the White House complex
and foreign embassies in and around Washington, D.C. The agents and
officers declined to discuss sensitive protective techniques and
methods so as not to compromise protectees' safety or the security of
the White House complex. Many of the agents and officers told the
magazine that they decided to come forward after the earlier U.S. News
article because of growing concerns about their ability to ensure the
safety of some protectees-family members who typically receive little
or no protective coverage. More than a dozen agents who have served on
protective details for a particular family member at various times
over the past year have expressed concern that security measures the
Secret Service has implemented on that individual's behalf were
dangerously inadequate. U.S. News has refrained from publishing
certain security information obtained during the reporting and
research for this article and is withholding the name, location, and
other details about the individual cited by these agents for security
reasons. "If something happens to this protectee," says one agent, "it
would cause great embarrassment. Not to mention the family; they would
be brokenhearted."

In addition to the merits of the new protective-methodology plan, some
agents question the timing of its implementation. The Secret Service
budget has increased 75 percent since 1999, to $1.05 billion today. At
the same time, though, the service has suffered a debilitating loss of
manpower while the scope of its protective and investigative missions
has increased significantly. After the September 11 attacks, President
Bush increased the number of protectees from 17 to 38. The number is
now down to 22, but that's still a significant increase for a
relatively small force of nearly 3,000 agents and roughly 1,000
Uniformed Division officers. The service has butted heads with other
agencies like the FBI as it has sought to expand the original mission
for which it was created-combating counterfeiting-to take on new
responsibilities like investigating cybercrimes and international
financial crimes. The service has also been given primary
responsibility for providing security at what it calls national
security special events like the Super Bowl and the recent Winter
Olympics Games in Salt Lake City.

The new missions come at the same time the departures of agents and
officers are accelerating. In the past year, more than 100
plainclothes agents have retired, quit, or taken jobs with the newly
created Transportation Security Administration, internal Secret
Service records show. In the past two months alone, the service has
lost special agents-in-charge of its field offices in Cincinnati,
Oklahoma City, Orlando, St. Louis, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Kansas
City, Mo. Many agents say they are leaving because they are fed up and
want better pay and more humane working conditions, including less
travel. These agents are averaging 81 hours overtime per month. A
unique Secret Service pension plan allows retirement-age agents to
rejoin the federal government at other agencies at elevated pay
grades. Even elite Counter Sniper technicians from the Uniformed
Division, who fill some of the most-sought-after and prestigious
positions in the service, are leaving. CS marksmen guard the roof of
the White House and travel on presidential and vice presidential
advance trips to identify and assess possible security risks.
Sometimes, Secret Service executives have had so few CS technicians
that they have been forced to resort to what one source describes as
"pseudo protection," for presidential or vice presidential events,
shining powerful floodlights, hanging huge drapes, or erecting special
barriers in lieu of posting Counter Snipers at vulnerable location. In
recent months, the shortage of CS technicians has been so acute that
on several occasions, only one officer has been assigned to plan
advance security for an event involving the president or vice
president. "They were cutting down power to do basic assessments,"
says a veteran Secret Service official. "CS advance is very difficult.
You could see [the technician] running around like a madman."

Double standard. Morale in the service is plummeting, many agents say,
in part because of a widely perceived double standard. Agents who
enjoy close relationships with Secret Service executives in Washington
are given more favorable assignments and other treatment than those
who don't, many in the service say. In the sometimes arcane parlance
of the Secret Service, these agents have what is known as a "hook"
with headquarters. The Secret Service has also had long-standing
management difficulties with its Uniformed Division, the officers and
technicians who are at the front line of defense at the White House
and at foreign missions. They include members of the elite Counter
Sniper teams, the Emergency Response Team, and the K-9 bomb squad
units. Many of these officers complain of being treated as
second-class citizens. Plainclothes agents sometimes refer to
uniformed officers as "box creatures," because they stand watch in the
little white booths around the White House grounds. Sources say that
some officers who transferred and became plainclothes agents found
anonymous notes soon after taking up their new duties saying, "once a
guard, always a guard." Many of the uniformed officers are overworked,
with even supervisors forced to put in an enormous amount of overtime.
Since last October, the Secret Service has lost more than 256
Uniformed Division officers, according to internal statistics provided
to U.S. News; if current trends continue, the total could rise as high
as 400 by year's end, nearly a third of the Uniformed Division's
workforce. The personnel drain throughout the service has led to a
decrease in the number of officers and agents available to protect the
White House. "They cut posts around the White House before 9/11," says
one source. Secret Service executives have had to shift officers who
train cadets at the Beltsville, Md., academy to the White House
complex. Officers assigned to guard foreign missions around Washington
have also been shifted to stand post at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Valued members of the Secret Service's technical staff are also
departing in significant numbers, including telephone and computer
experts and highly trained encryption specialists.

Pressure cooker. The numbers alone are alarming, many inside the
Secret Service say, but they also translate into a worrisome loss of
experience among those who remain. When veteran trainers and
supervisors leave, they take with them years of institutional
knowledge and practical, hands-on experience that often cannot be
taught by less experienced personnel. Agents and former Uniformed
Division officers tell U.S. News that they fear that the enormous
pressure to quickly hire and train new agents, combined with the lower
hiring standards that were implemented in recent years, may further
compromise security, if the wrong people are brought on board. In the
past, Secret Service job applicants who had used any drugs, including
marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, were automatically disqualified and
sent on their way. But now, sources say, an applicant who has stayed
clear of marijuana for just 36 months and smoked it only 10 times can
still qualify. And the Secret Service will consider candidates with
cocaine or heroin use-as long as it was before their 21st birthday.
The service now classifies such activity as a "youthful indiscretion."

In meetings with members of Congress, Treasury Department overseers,
and White House officials, Secret Service executives have sought to
downplay the extent of personnel problems. But they have also had
little to say publicly about their new approach to guarding high
government officials and their families. Director Stafford and his
deputies have committed very little information about the new
protective-methology procedures to paper, several agents say. These
agents worry that there has not been the kind of rigorous training,
testing, and lesson planning based on the new protective theory, as
has been the case with traditional protective methods. Agents and
officers interviewed for this article expressed concern that if
something goes wrong, there is so little on paper about the
protective-methodology procedures that line agents and officers may be
held accountable for decisions made by higher-ups. "Congress," says
one veteran agent, "is going to grill our behinds, barbecue our
backsides when, not if, but when-something happens." Adds another
agent: "All you're doing is counting the days and hours you've been
lucky."

Some key causes of concern:

The Secret Service is so hard pressed to find trained Mag officers to
screen people attending public functions with the president, vice
president, and other top officials that it has had to reduce the
number of such officers at some events. When heads of Secret Service
details request Mag officers, they are often told that none is
available; when they turn in security advance plans to headquarters,
approved plans often come back with the number of Mag officers
reduced, even for the president's detail, sources say. Detail heads
have been forced on some occasions to pull agents from other posts to
fill in near X-ray machines to scan crowds or even to use hand-held
devices to screen attendees. One source says agents assigned to Cheney
always make sure they are "vested up," have their bulletproof vests
on, when they don't get magnetometer support and worry that a
terrorist or a deranged person might sneak a gun into an event.

Because of concerns in part over excessive cost, Secret Service
officials have declined to install ballistic glass in front of windows
of hotels or other venues where key protectees have been scheduled to
appear. "They won't put up ballistic glass," says an agent, "because
they have to pay money to bring in a truck with a hydraulic lift to
roll the glass in." Supervisors also frequently nix requests from
agents for camouflaged armored sheets of steel used at outdoor events
or in hotels to guard against sniper fire.

Agents say the Secret Service has failed to adjust its post-9/11
security procedures to address the potential threat of an aerial
attack. The service, sources say, must demand more aggressive vetting
of small aircraft by local police and other government agencies in
advance of public events involving the president and vice president.
Agents say they are especially worried about charter planes, because
they receive virtually no security screening and their flight paths
are typically not monitored. "It raises concerns," says one agent,
"about how to reassure those who are under our protection about their
safety, when really, we can't."

Security precautions taken for the first lady, some agents say, are
often dangerously inadequate. In Washington, Laura Bush's motorcade
does not even get the benefit of "intersection control"-coordinated
traffic lights, a basic security measure accorded many high-risk
visiting foreign dignitaries. And agents say they are concerned about
the security of the vice president's wife, Lynne.

When her father was president, Chelsea Clinton was regularly assigned
a two-man Counter Assault Team, in addition to her regular detail,
after she received threats when she was a Stanford University student.
The Bush daughters briefly were assigned similar teams after September
11, sources say, but they have since been pulled back.

Added to the loss of experienced agents and officers, many in the
Secret Service believe executives remain skeptical of the value of
some elite special units like Counter Assault, Counter Surveillance,
and Emergency Response teams-the Pentagon-trained Uniformed Division
officers who protect the White House. These sources say that many
senior supervisory agents in the field and officials at headquarters
are philosophically at odds with using these techniques. "They think
we are cowboys," says a former veteran Emergency Response Team member,
"and that it's overkill." This former officer and other sources say
there's a kind of generation gap, due in part to the fact that many
senior officials never went through the specialized training now
required of the Secret Service's most elite units. Training is a key
measurement. Many agents and officers describe the training of new
recruits as excellent, but others say the Secret Service is behind the
curve. "These guys think old school," says one former officer who came
to the Secret Service from the military. The specialized teams train
to respond to multiple threats, like the September 11 attacks, and to
rocket, chemical, and biological assaults. But most officers not on
the elite teams and nonspecial team agents are still trained on a
"single cycle" threat, such as that posed by a lone gunman. Some of
these agents believe that after 9/11, the service should have modified
its training curriculum to focus more on responding to multipronged
attacks.

"Standing down." Paramount among the Secret Service's high-priority
protective missions, of course, is the White House and its
inhabitants. Despite the agency's ability to scramble and redeploy
agents and officers from other responsibilities over the past year,
the challenge is only likely to grow, agents and officers say. More
than five years ago, special operations experts from the elite
military counterterrorism unit Delta Force conducted a threat
assessment of the White House and found numerous vulnerabilities.
Secret Service executives have implemented only a few minor changes
since that study, sources say. The threats are varied and not easy, in
some cases, to counter. Veteran Secret Service officers worry, for
example, about the long-standing custom of "standing down" when
members of Congress come to call at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. One
former officer says he requested a congressman's voting card to
double-check the member's identification and was "reamed out" by his
supervisor after the congressman complained. Officers who spoke with
U.S. News for this article say they have been forced time and again to
allow members of Congress to enter the White House complex without
identification because they have complained loudly when challenged.
The worries, these sources say, are not misplaced. In April 1994, at
the funeral reception for former President Richard Nixon at his
library in Yorba Linda, Calif., a middle-aged man using fake
identification papers sauntered through the VIP-congressional area and
approached then President Clinton and former President George Bush. He
attempted to engage them in conversation before he was finally
detained, arrested, and charged with trespassing. "There's no way we
can know even a quarter of these people," says one officer. "Yet we
are supposed to allow them onto the ground without a picture ID. You
can buy congressional pins or congressional license plates off eBay."

The Secret Service has a long and proud history of meeting difficult
challenges and beating them. Many agents and officers, still intensely
loyal to the agency, say they believe that with the right leadership
and an influx of new blood, the service can handle whatever new
demands it is required to meet. But others worry that the double
whammy of personnel losses and increased responsibilities may be
impeding the ability of the agency to function at the high levels
expected of it. For some in the Secret Service, that challenge comes
down to a decidedly personal level. "I hate to say this, but I
couldn't have cared less," says one officer who has left the service.
"If someone tried something, I probably would have missed it, because
I just did not care."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

E-mail this page to a friend

Secrets of the Service: Pressures and problems confront the police
agency that protects the president. (6/17/02)

In the line of fire: A Secret Service agent blows the whistle on his
agency and winds up the target of investigators. (5/27/02)

Security Blanket: The Secret Service leads the effort to protect 2,500
Olympic athletes and a million spectators. (1/28/02)

2002 U.S. News & World Report, L.P.